Glass Houses (11 page)

“Why didn't he confess the first time?” he asked Tibor.

Tibor was obviously thinking about something else. He was leaning slightly forward, trying to get as full a look at the street as possible. Gregor tapped him on the arm.

“Why didn't he confess the first time?” he asked Tibor again.

Tibor pulled his attention back to the table. “I don't know,” he said. “Is that unusual? Is it the habit of serial killers to confess the first time they are suspected?”

“No,” Gregor said. “Quite the opposite. But then, most of them never
confess at all, unless they get away with it for so long it begins to make them crazy not to get credit for it. And even then, it's rare.”

“So then. Possibly this man was unhappy not to be getting the credit for it.”

“After only, what, eighteen months and eleven murders?”

“Tcha, Krekor. It would take you to think of it as
only
eleven murders.” “It's not much for a serial killer,” Gregor said. He went back to looking at the paper. There were mountains and mountains of type. He looked into the face of Henry Tyder. It was the picture of him coming out of court after “causing a distubance,” whatever that meant. Gregor thought the man looked extremely pleased with himself.

“Why did he confess
this
time?” he asked.

Tibor brushed this away. “You are the expert on serial killers, Krekor, not me. If I had been in this man's position, I would have confessed out of feelings of guilt, but serial killers are not supposed to have feelings of guilt. I have no idea why they do what they do.”

Actually, Gregor thought, almost nobody had any idea why serial killers did what they did. There were legions of psychologists with theories, and the theories ranged through everything from childhood sexual abuse to early addiction to pornography, but nobody really knew. Gregor Demarkian had spent over fifteen years of his life chasing serial killers, the last ten of them directing the first law-enforcement division ever dedicated to doing that and nothing else. He didn't know either, and he didn't think that his successor at the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit knew either. It was ridiculous to call this kind of thing “science.”

“Still,” he said.

He was so wrapped up in trying to make sense of it, he didn't notice that the Ararat had gone almost completely quiet. If he had, he would have been more convinced than ever that the entire population of Cavanaugh Street was on a crusade to drive poor Phillipa Lydgate crazy. Instead, he kept running the most likely scenarios through his head. Henry Tyder confessed because he'd been caught red-handed. He confessed because he wanted the police to know how clever he was. He confessed because he was tired of the entire process and didn't think he could stop by himself.

“Crap,” Gregor said.

Across the table, Tibor cleared his throat again. “Krekor, please,” he said. “You are not paying attention.”

Gregor thought he was paying far more attention than he should have been. The Plate Glass Killer case was not his case, in spite of the fact that he'd helped out Edmund George when a friend of his had been unjustly suspected, and he wasn't even sure he wanted it to be. There had been a time when he found serial killers fascinating, but that time was long gone. If there was anything really
interesting at all about the Plate Glass Killer, it was that he did not rape his victims, before or after death. That, and the fact that this man—
this particular man
—had confessed to being the perpetrator.

“Krekor,” Tibor said again.

Gregor looked up. Standing next to their table was a woman he had not seen before. She was tallish, and very, very thin, and he hated her on sight.

G
regor Demarkian was not
a man who jumped to conclusions, especially about people. If he had been, he would not have been as effective as he was when he was still in the FBI, and he certainly wouldn't have been as effective as he had been in the years since, when all people hired him for was his ability to think through a problem without prejudice. He was also not someone who took instant likings and dislikings to people he didn't know. He was far too aware of how often first impressions were the basis for a trust that benefitted only conmen, and of how too many very good people were messes and losers on first sight.

The woman standing next to their table was not a mess or a loser. Gregor was willing to bet she'd never been a mess in her life. She was dressed up as if she were going to work at a law firm—or, better yet, as if she were going to work at a law firm on a television program—and she was holding an unlit cigarette in her left hand. Gregor wasn't put off by the cigarette. Bennis had smoked for years, and all the very old men who had come from Armenia smoked foul Turkish weed nearly nonstop. There was something wrong with the way this woman held hers though. He had no idea what it was.

Tibor had gotten to his feet. Gregor now got to his, feeling somehow put out that he'd been shocked into forgetting how to behave. You could tell this woman noticed things like that and interpreted them, not always kindly.

“Krekor,” Tibor said. “This is Miss Lydgate.”

“That's right,” Phillipa Lydgate said. “I'm Phillipa Lydgate. You must be Gregor Demarkian. I've heard a great deal about you.”

“How do you do,” Gregor said. It was the kind of thing Bennis would say, when she was trying to put somebody off. He even sounded like Bennis doing it.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” Phillipa said. She waited just a split second before Tibor sat down again and then slid onto the booth bench next to him. “I'm sorry to interrupt your breakfast, and I won't be long; but this looks like the only chance I'll have to get most of the people around here in a face-to-face. Is this a usual thing in this part of America, going out to restaurants for breakfast rather than eating at home?”

Gregor sat down again, carefully. They had had a rule when he was still in the FBI. When you were talking to reporters, you had always to assume you were on the record. “I don't know what's usual,” he said finally. “On this street it's something of a tradition.”

“And everybody on this street is of Armenian ethnicity.”

It was a statement, not a question. “Of course not,” Gregor said. “Bennis lives on this street, and she's about as Armenian as pumpkin pie.”

“It is not only Bennis,” Tibor rushed in. “There is Grace.” He gestured to the middle of the room. “She is there. She plays the harpsichord. And there is Dmitri who runs the newsstand. He is from Russia.”

“Where is this Grace from?” Phillipa asked.

“Connecticut,” Gregor said blandly.

Tibor gestured wildly at the wider restaurant. “Grace Fineman. Her family came from Germany, I think, but many generations ago.”

“And she's Jewish,” Gregor said.

Linda Melajian was suddenly there, carrying the coffeepot and a cup and saucer. She put them down on the table in front of Phillipa, reached into the pocket of her apron and came out with a handful of foilwrapped Stash tea bags.

“I can get you some hot water if you'd rather have tea,” Linda said. “And I can get you some breakfast if you want it. Not that you have to have it. People come in here and drink coffee in the mornings all the time. There's no obligation. Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee will be fine,” Phillipa said.

Linda poured coffee into the plain white stoneware cup and blushed. Then she took off again. Phillipa Lydgate watched her go.

“She's very accommodating,” she said. “Is that usual? Is there a reason for her to feel so anxious? Is she afraid of losing her job?”

“Hardly,” Gregor said. “Linda's family owns this restaurant. Her father started it.”

“Does he beat her? There must be some reason for the way she behaves.”

“Vartan Melajian couldn't bring himself to beat carpets,” Gregor said, “and there's really no mystery about the way she behaves. She's naturally accommodating, and she especially wants to accommodate you.”

“Why me? She doesn't even know me.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “And you're exotic, and sophisticated, and from another country. If I were you, I'd get used to it. There are quite a few people here who feel the same way. You're our celebrity of the moment.”

Phillipa Lydgate looked around the restaurant. A dozen people were trying to look at her without letting on that that was what they were doing. She reached into her purse and found her lighter.

“Does this restaurant serve all American food?” she asked, pointing to Tibor's little plates of hash browns and sausages.

“It serves American and Armenian,” Gregor said. “It's just that most people don't order Armenian for breakfast. Come back at lunch or dinner though. Especially dinner. Dinner is full of tourists. They're always eating Armenian food.”

“Be serious, Krekor,” Tibor said. “We're all eating Armenian food.”

Phillipa Lydgate looked lost in thought. “So people from other neighborhoods come here,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

“Why would it be a problem?” Gregor asked.

“Well, with community feeling. Communities tend to want to defend themselves against outsiders. In some places in the United States, there have been incidents of violence and murder when someone wandered into a neighborhood he didn't belong in.”

“Have there?” Gregor said.

Phillipa Lydgate looked him up and down. “You used to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, isn't that right? And you still have something to do with the police force.”

“In the first place,” Gregor said, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not the ‘police force.' It's a federal agency charged with investigating crimes on federal land and against federal law as it applies under the Commerce Clause. In the second place, I have nothing to do with any ‘police force,' unless one of them hires me as a consultant. Which some of them sometimes do.”

“Sorry,” Phillipa said. “Let me put that another way. You've had a long career in law enforcement, and you still have contact with law enforcement on a regular basis.”

“Yes,” Gregor said.

“So you must know of the kinds of violence I'm speaking of. Crown Heights, in New York City, wasn't it? Where a group of black youths beat an Hasidic Jewish man to death when he wandered into their neighborhood. And neighborhoods in Los Angeles that belong now to gangs: the Crips and the Bloods. And to wander into the other gang's territory is to die.”

“Those things absolutely happened,” Gregor said, “although you've got the Crown Heights' story in a truncated version. I'm just not sure what you think they have to do with Cavanaugh Street.”

“Well,” Phillipa said.

Gregor looked at his enormous mound of melon. He didn't want to eat it anymore. He wished he'd ordered his old fry-up this morning, just to confirm Phillipa Lydgate in her prejudices.

“The boys here couldn't join gangs,” Tibor said. “Their mothers wouldn't let them.”

Gregor gave him a long look. It was hard to tell when Tibor was angry or
upset. The years in Armenia before he'd been able to come to America had ensured that because he was always liable to arrest just for being a priest. But Gregor knew Tibor, and Tibor was beyond upset. He was close to exploding.

“Look,” Gregor said. “Maybe it would make just a little more sense if you'd hold off deciding you knew what was going on until you actually did know. You've been here—how long? Twenty-four hours?”

“Less than fifteen,” Phillipa said, “but it's not my first trip to America. I've been several times.”

“Where?”

“New York. Washington. Los Angeles.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “It would be the same if I went to the United Kingdom, visited nothing but Buckingham Palace and Hampton Court, and came back saying I knew what Britain was like. This is a fairly ordinary neighborhood in this city. It's a little more upmarket than some, and it's unusual in the number of families with children, because families with children tend to move to the suburbs. But nobody shoots up the landscape here. There are no gangs. I don't think anybody even owns a gun.”

“Howard Kashinian owns a gun,” Tibor said. “But Sheila took his bullets, so that he would not make a fool of himself.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Howard. Well, Howard is Howard.”

Phillipa Lydgate's cigarette was collecting a long column of ash. “But this state does have the death penalty, doesn't it?” she asked. “Bennis's own sister was executed. And there is at least one town where the school board wants to teach the biblical theory of creation instead of science. And there are murders here. I looked them up.”

“Yes, there are murders here,” Gregor said. “And a school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, did try to mention something called Intelligent Design in science classrooms; but virtually all of them were voted out of office at the next election, so that even if the court case hadn't gone against them they would still have failed in their attempts to change the curriculum. It's just not as simple as you seem to want to make it out to be.”

“There are places in the United States where they wouldn't be voted out of office, aren't there?”

“Yes, I would suppose there are. There are 291 million people in the United States. My guess is that we've got some of everything.”

“And religion,” Phillipa said. “There's a lot of religion. Most Americans are Fundamentalists of one kind or another, aren't they?”

“Have you met many Fundamentalists?” Gregor asked.

“Well, no, of course not,” Phillipa said. “I mean, you said it yourself. I haven't been to the more typical places in America, only to the coasts where things are different. I'm talking about the real America now—the Heartland.”